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EJToday: Top Headlines

EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically, but may opt out here. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed. Please see Editorial Guidelines for EJToday content.

"Jodi Ross, town manager in Westford, Mass., did not expect she would be threatened with arrest after she and her fire chief went onto the railroad tracks to find out why a train carrying liquid petroleum gas derailed on a bridge in February. But as they reached the accident site northwest of Boston, a manager for Pan Am Railways called the police, claiming she was trespassing on rail property. The cars were eventually put back on the tracks safely, but the incident underlined a reality for local officials dealing with railroads."

"U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell nearly 10 percent from 2005 to 2012, more than halfway toward the United States' 2020 target pledged at United Nations climate talks, according to the latest national emissions inventory."

"WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court Tuesday upheld the Environmental Protection Agency's first-ever limits on air toxics, including emissions of mercury, arsenic and acid gases, preserving a far-reaching rule the White House had touted as central to President Barack Obama's environmental agenda."

"The United States needs to enact a major climate change law, such as a tax on carbon pollution, by the end of this decade to stave off the most catastrophic impacts of global warming, according to the authors of a report released this week by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

"WASHINGTON -- Last year, the U.S. wind energy industry chalked up a record number of projects and generating capacity under construction. By year end, private corporations invested billions of dollars, and new records for generation were set in many locations, according to the U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Report Year Ending 2013, released Thursday by the American Wind Energy Association, AWEA."

"When the Atlantic hurricane season opens June 1, national forecasters will roll out a new feature: color-coded and broadcast-ready maps to graphically show the potential for flooding from storm surges."

''Cementing protection for one of the largest privately owned pieces of land on California's 1,100-mile coastline, a San Francisco environmental group on Monday donated to the public the Coast Dairies property - a pastoral expanse of rolling meadows, redwood forests and panoramic ocean views north of Santa Cruz."

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) weighed in Monday against a Nevada rancher who is battling the federal government. 'Well, it’s not over,'Reid told KRNV, a Reno, Nev.-based television station. 'We can’t have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it's not over.'"

"Drilling at several natural gas wells in southwestern Pennsylvania released methane into the atmosphere at rates that were 100 to 1,000 times higher than federal regulators had estimated, new research shows."

"BANGKOK — As head of his village, Prajob Naowa-opas battled to save his community in central Thailand from the illegal dumping of toxic waste by filing petitions and leading villagers to block trucks carrying the stuff — until a gunman in broad daylight fired four shots into him."

"March 2014 was the fourth-warmest March on record globally, according to recently released NASA data, making it the 349th month — more than 29 years — in which global temperatures were above the historic average."